Low rate releases of hazardous light gases under semi-confined geometry: A consequence based approach and case-study application

As evidenced by accident statistics, an important factor when considering the safe operation of process plants is the effective mitigation of the effects of gaseous flammable releases, either by a prevention, or a protection approach. A detailed historical analysis was performed considering accidental scenarios associated with the use and management of light gases, starting from raw data selected from FACTS database and analysed by a causal multi-layer method. Results revealed that the major part of the accidental releases involving methane, hydrogen, ethene, ammonia can be attributed to organizational or process/plant immediate causes. As expected, the most frequent scenarios following the release are fire and explosion. We focus our attention on the development of a short-cut method allowing preliminary evaluation of the maximum gaseous build-up under semi-confined conditions, limiting the effects of the fire/explosion scenario to a tolerable level. The limitations of the model that is applied to selected case-studies and require further experimental validation are critically discussed. The results of the application of the model, which can boast of being safe but not disproportionately conservative, can be set as a maximum threshold in proper designing technical measures aiming at limiting the effects to a tolerable level by protection methods, e.g. isolation, venting, suppression and containment.